Once a week, on Mondays, I travel to Kamakura to teach an English Conversation class. I love that each week I am forced to leave the base - it is too easy for me to become complacent and stay within the confines of the familiar. I have to create reasons to leave and go outside the gates.

This particular morning however, I was wishing I could take the day off, it was pouring down rain and the thought of snuggling up with a cup of tea and a good book was much more appealing. As I was walking out the door to catch my train 3 of our smoke detectors went off simultaneously, 2 more minutes and I would have been in the car driving off to the train station. As I shooed our faithful canine outside to spare her ears, I called 911 while at the same time thinking "damn, I'm going to miss my train." The guy on the other end certainly didn't seem to be too concerned - I explained that I wasn't cooking, there was no smoke, no apparent fire - and he said I could disconnect them and call maintenance. Looking at my watch and now realizing if I didn't leave IMMEDIATELY, I would miss the last train I could take to get to my class on time. I ditched the call to maintenance, threw the one smoke detector I could not for the life of me get to stop going off under my daughter's bean bag to smother the noise and headed out the door. In a panic. Because I was going to basically have to run to the train station in the pouring down rain. All the while I'm thinking to myself - is it just me? Do other Navy spouses have these misadventures? Is someone upstairs trying to tell me something? And WHY can't I figure out what it is?!

Fast forward and I arrive at the JR station with somehow about 5 minutes to spare. Guess I didn't need to run afterall. But perhaps I did - standing on the platform, waiting for the train and catching my breath and thinking, damn I really need to start amping up the cardio, three young Asian men dressed in Navy uniforms approach me. Now at first I must admit I'm a bit confused. Usually, the Japanese are in their own zone - they're not rude or anything like that but for the most part when I'm on the train or in a station it's like I'm not there. Noone makes eye contact with me, smiles, says hello ... anything. And I'm really good with that. So a) I have someone approaching me and b) I know they're not Japanese, adding to my further state of confusion. When I first arrived here in Japan, I had a Japanese ask me if I thought they (Asians) all look alike. I was somewhat taken aback. I mean in the U.S. even if you thought that you'd never actually say it! I was even more surprised at my immediate response - which was of course not. It would be like saying all white people look alike. I wasn't sure where these young men were from, but I knew they weren't Japanese.

It turns out they were asking me for help in getting to Tokyo.* Which train was the right train. Upon a few more questions, I found out they wanted to go to Shibuya. While I am no expert on the Tokyo train system I know enough that they were going to have to switch trains at some point. Looking at the time left, I had 3 minutes before the ever efficient Japanese train pulled up, I dashed to the station master, asked for a map, asked which station someone would have to switch at to get to Shibuya and dashed back to circle the transfer station and the arrival station on the map - all somehow before the train pulled up. I wished them well and asked where they were from - Thailand.

A long time ago I read a great book called the The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. I've thought of it quite a few times since arriving in Japan, and once I took my seat on the train for my 20 minutes of quiet time (the Japanese trains are really quiet - noone talks, there are no cell phones conversations, it's wonderful) the book came to mind again. I know there's so much more to the book than this - but what I came away with is that we make connections for a reason, and we have to figure out what those connections are. What is it that a spiritual being is trying to tell us?

For all the craziness of the morning, the nasty weather, the wishful thinking of being curled up in a nice warm place I realized that someone had just asked for my help and amazingly enough, I had been able to provide it. I thought back to the first month we were here and how I took the kids to Kamakura on my own to see the Lantern Festival and I was terrified that we would end up on the other side of Tokyo. I didn't know how to read the Kanji, I wasn't really confident about how to add more Yen to our train cards, even less confident I knew how to call Jeff on my cell phone (because it's in Japanese) if we did end up in Tokyo. None of that came to pass. Now I ride the train to Tokyo once a month to take a class, I can close my eyes and catnap on the way to Kamakura and Fujisawa and Tokyo (if I'm lucky enough to get a seat) like all the other Japanese riding the trains. And, it turns out I can actually help others get around in Japan (well luckily for me they were asking something relatively easy). It made me realize I have come a really long way in the last 8 months and maybe the reason I connected with the young Thai Navy men was because I needed to be reminded of just that. To keep getting out there - staying where it's safe, and warm and cozy and being complacent isn't going to get me very far - who knows what the next 8 months will bring, but I can't wait to find out. Inspiring.

* I believe, but of course am not sure, that they approached me over the 50+ Japanese nationals also standing on the platform, because they guessed with the U.S. Navy base here in Yokosuka I spoke English. Their English was quite good and we had no issues communicating. There are many Japanese on the other hand that even though they can read English (and probably speak enough to get by) they will deny knowing the language - I've come to realize this is a cultural thing. In Japan, if you don't do something extremely well (what we'd call perfect in the U.S.) then they won't admit to knowing how to do it at all. I was a safe bet for the Thai servicemen.